Chop Chop (7 page)

And then . . . silence. The kitchen stood at attention like an army in the moment before battle, awaiting the first volley of arrows, listening for the first signs of attack. As the silence grew, so too did the anxiety. A deluge was coming. The longer this silence went on, the harder the deluge would be. It was an awkward, sleazy wink sort of silence; not, in fact, a silence at all, but a digest of many small noises, each lacking the particular accompanying sound that made them whole. It was the sound of absence: the absence of pans clunking on the blazing burners, of chefs' cries bouncing off the tiled walls, of plates clattering on the work surfaces. Such stillness hung about the place, one struggled to imagine that bodies had ever whirled and jagged about it. The sheer and total industry of the kitchen was at a standstill. Ice melted slowly in the trays.

Croak!

Then, suddenly, there it was. The sound everyone was waiting for. A
croak croak
cutting through the empty noise. The ticket machine hacking up the first check of a long night and Bob tearing the paper off to cry . . . “
Ça marche! Check on!”

This was how it always began.

The night Dibden went down, the night The Fat Man came to dinner, was no different. The early, breathless anticipation; the first rush gathering momentum as one by one each section joined the
fight; the strange little bubbles of calm between the frenzies. Dibden did not get a dessert check on until seven thirty, a single order for caramelized pears and ice cream. And though the pears were harder than they should have been and took an age to cook, he produced the dish with only cosmetic mumblings from Bob about how shit he was and how he needed to play the game.

Then it got worse. Around eight there was a brief flurry of dessert checks from the early tables and suddenly Dibden had four different tickets on his grabber and was trying to cook twenty different things at once. Then Bob, as wolfish as ever, stuck his fat finger in the garlicky crème anglaise Dibden was heating on the side of the solid top and declared it fucking gash. The whole lot went in the bin and Dibden found himself in the inconvenient position of having to separate egg whites from yolks and heat cream and split vanilla pods with twenty dishes still to make while a very fat and unfriendly chef bawled in his ear about the ingenious things he was going to do to his intimate parts.

“Dibden's sweating like a nun in a fish market,” Ramilov observed.

Dibden did not even have time to object that this was offensive to nuns.

Then it got worse. A raspberry soufflé burst in the oven and had to go in the bin and Dibden had to get another in fucking ASAP but he could not send the other desserts for the soufflé table because the soufflé would be twenty minutes and everyone else would have finished by the time it arrived. He managed to fob off a flat fondant and caramelized pears onto another table that was waiting, pushing the fondant through the pass to the waitress with the button nose before Bob, momentarily distracted by a table of mains, could speculate on its lack of height. He flicked the first spores of white mold from the top of the ganache tartlets and prayed to the god of the
kitchen, a most unobliging god by all accounts, that Bob would not notice.

As Dibden was scooping some runny quince membrillo into a ramekin for a cheese plate, Camp Charles ran in asking about the desserts for the soufflé table that had now been waiting for thirty minutes. It seemed a reasonable question. Bob, particularly, was impressed by its reasonableness and began to demand an answer to it in language that was less reasonable. Now the mint was trembling in Dibden's hands, his mouth was slack and his head lolling one way and then the other. Punch drunk. Spavined. Former. And all the while the machine hacked out dessert checks and everyone else was too busy with their own drastic situations to improve Dibden's and soon Bob's greedy fingers would poke their way into a ganache and deduce that all was not well there and his keen eyes would spy the crumbling pastry tarts and exhausted fondants and stewed raspberries and there would be separate, clearly labeled portions of hell to pay for each of them. The more mistakes Bob spotted, the more particular he became, until Dibden could not hold a plate without provoking his ire. In time there were so many orders to do and mistakes waiting to be made that Dibden did not even know where to begin and only stood there paralyzed in the middle of the kitchen, a latter-day Buridan's ass, dying of indecision between the proverbial stack of hay and pail of water while Bob screamed blue fury at him.

In the middle of this shitstorm something happened that made everyone, Bob included, forget for a moment about Dibden and his ongoing torture. Camp Charles appeared once more at the back of the kitchen, this time in a state of great anxiety. Ordinarily the maître d' was an unchanging façade of civility. No one, customers or staff, could tell what he was really thinking, which was a great boon in the service industry, where people were usually thinking the
worst thing imaginable. Now his plump face bore signs of strain. One hand wrung the other.

“What's the matter with you, gay boy?” said Ramilov, who loved Camp Charles unconditionally, for his constant innuendo and the professionalism he wore so effortlessly alongside it. “Why don't you touch my arse? It'll cheer you up.”

Under normal circumstances Camp Charles would have been delighted to take him up on the offer—though he maintained he was not actually gay, just very unimpressed. “I've sucked enough dicks to know I'm straight,” he once told Ramilov, which was the only time I ever saw Ramilov lost for a response. But now the maître d' ignored the invitation. “The Fat Man's here,” was all he said.

Dave stared at Camp Charles in horror.

“What did you say?” he asked.

“
The Fat Man is here
,” Camp Charles repeated.

The kitchen fell silent. Bob, midway through a complicated volley of abuse to do with Dibden's parentage, seemed to turn to stone. I craned my neck past him and saw what looked at first like a moderately sized marquee blocking the dining room doorway. As my eyes recalibrated I realized it was the largest man I had ever seen. He spotted the table the front of house was fussing over for him and began moving toward us like a ship pulls out of harbor, its movements slow but possessed of absolute authority, the great sails of fabric that were his clothes tightening and slackening with the motion. I would have remained transfixed had Dibden not made a plaintive cry for eggs and sent me off at a scramble for the dry store.

The Fat Man! A legend in the considerable flesh, here at The Swan! My hands trembled as I turned the speckled shells from their seats. I had heard all the stories. Dave said The Fat Man controlled Camden's vast and sprawling underworld. Camp Charles said he had heard from a busboy at The Crown who had heard from the
maître d' at The Castle that The Fat Man ran a secret dining club, a club with exotic tastes. The maître d' had been Waiter of the Year 2008, and he knew things. Others suggested he was a food critic, but Bob was not scared of critics. He bitched about them and everyone else, yet he would say nothing about The Fat Man except that his food had better be fucking soigné. Everyone had a theory on this corpulent mystery, but no one knew anything for certain, not even his real name. The only thing we knew for sure was that he had a remarkable effect on Bob, indeed on anyone who had heard of him. Several caustic senior chefs, and one sardonic maître d', now started falling over themselves to do his bidding.

The rest of that evening Bob bowed and scraped as if his enormous guest were the king of Spain. The Saturday rush paled in comparison. Smiling broadly, oozing with convivial menace, The Fat Man eclipsed all else as he ate. And how he could eat! Three or four starters, and every main going. Tremendous amounts were consumed, seemingly without limit or pleasure. Despite his booming bonhomie and the sharp smiles he flashed at Bob or the nervous front of house staff, his face bore no trace of joy or appreciation as he ate. He had an aggressively friendly manner of complaining that became more sinister the longer it went on.

“
Dear boy!”
he shouted at Camp Charles
. “Are you trying to starve me with these portions? Do you wish me to waste away? Where is the seasoning on this beef? Where is its soul? Am I not a good customer? Why do you hate me? You must hate me to serve me this. What's the wait, friend? A little morsel of piglet is all I ask. A little bloody liver to whet my whistle. A smidgeon of pigeon. Something with flavor for a change. Something with taste.”

Yet every morsel was devoured, every plate wiped clean. He treated food as billionaires treat money, as showgirls treat presents from admirers. An entitlement he claimed even though it disgusted
him. His size—limitless, free-form, overspilling in a way that made Bob look like an old stick—confirmed his attitude. I kept forgetting whom I was running errands for or what I was supposed to be fetching, it was impossible not to stop everything and just watch him eat. Also I felt uneasy ignoring him. You didn't turn your back on
that
.

When the dessert menu was put in front of him, The Fat Man ordered the lot. Camp Charles said he didn't even read the list. Poor Dibden, already quite sunk, gripped the service fridge as the check came through. He gulped. He wobbled. A drowned man's pallor crept over him. The flailing that ensued, not helped by Bob's screams for “perfection or death,” was the worst yet. Those long hands had aged a hundred years in an evening. They stumbled over simple dishes, dishes plated a thousand times before. That small sad head of his looked farther away than ever, pushed out of the top of his body like toothpaste from a tube. His chin, subjected to such inward pressure, such violent disappointment, had receded completely; it had vacated his face. Dave, seeing how broken he was, came over to garnish and decorate the plates.

—

Toward the end of the evening, as I was changing the cloths on the pass one final time, I witnessed The Fat Man at close quarters. Having annihilated his last dish of the evening, he pushed the table away and hoisted himself from his seat for a word with Bob.

“Everything all right with the food?” Bob cringed.

“You did the best you could, Bobby,” The Fat Man replied. “But I know you'll do better with the Christmas feast.”

“It's a lot of people.” Bob sounded nervous.

“A lot of people owe me,” The Fat Man answered.

“I mean . . . it's a lot of people to cook for.”

The Fat Man widened his eyes. “Well, Bobby, you'll have to work extra hard then, won't you?”

“Couldn't we cut the numbers slightly?” Bob pleaded. “The weekend before Christmas will be crazy.”

“You busy, are you?” The Fat Man smiled.

“I am a bit,” said Bob.

“Busy Bobby,” said The Fat Man, still quietly taunting. “Always hard at work. It amazes me you have the time to make those tapes. . . . Requires a lot of dedication, I imagine. A
dogged
approach. . . . You making another anytime soon? Pets Win Prizes?”

“All right,” Bob hissed.

“Have you forgotten how this works?” said The Fat Man. “Do I need to remind you?”

“All right, all right.” Bob had started sweating. He looked like death. “We'll keep the numbers as they are.”

“That's it, Bobby,” said The Fat Man. “That's it.”

When The Fat Man left, Bob turned to the kitchen. Clearly, he was keen to pay the threats forward. His fury fell on Dibden, leaning, ghostly and broken, against the pastry fridge. In a pathetic attempt at cleaning down, the exhausted chef flopped a damp sponge about the surface.

“And you were a fucking disgrace this evening,” Bob snarled at him. “
Again
,” he added, a reference to the Wednesday evening just passed when Dibden had sunk on larder and Ramilov had had to be released from the fridge sooner than Bob might have wished. “I'm putting you on donkey jobs for the next fucking year. Right now I wouldn't trust you to peel a carrot, you cunt.”

Dibden hung his head. From the outset he had shown a potential for failure, and he had made good on his promise. What would become of the rest of us remained to be seen.

A
t the insistence of Ramilov and Racist Dave, I have included a glossary of kitchen terms. I should point out that this list is unique to The Swan; every restaurant kitchen has its own particular idiom. Yet there is also a universal language of chefs, represented here by the French words and phrases, which you might hear in the back of any decent restaurant from New York to Bombay. And there are still other phrases that every restaurant has a version of, out of necessity, such as
chaud behind
. These may vary from place to place, or region to region, but they will always be present in some form.

I have explained to Ramilov and Dave that a glossary traditionally appears before or after the main body of work, but they were adamant it should go here because, quote, it looks less boring and people will feel like they have to read it. I should also point out that neither Ramilov nor Dave has an English literature degree, or any academic qualification beyond GCSE.

ALL DAY:
Across all checks.

AWAY:
Re an order. When the check or course is away, the customer is waiting.

BLAZE UP:
Slang.
To start cooking.

ÇA MARCHE:
Pronounced “summ-age.” The French means something like “It's walking.” In the kitchen it means the order is on and away.

CHAUD BEHIND:
Coming past and carrying something hot. Also Backs, Chaud (pronounced “sho”), Chaud backs, Behind, Hot pan.

CHECK:
A table's order, and its printed counterpart.

CHINOIS:
French term for a conical strainer, similar to a sieve.

COOKING ON GAS:
Statement of fact, repeated loudly.

FIX UP:
Slang.
Sort yourself out.

FUCKING OUI:
Expression of strong approval.

GASH:
Expression of strong disapproval; female genitals.

GO DOWN:
Due to how few women chefs meet, and the language they use when they do, this phrase rarely has anything to do with the above definition. Instead, it is almost always used to describe the physical and/or mental collapse of a chef during service.

GRABBER:
A rail, usually placed at eye level on the sauce section, pastry section and pass, that holds the relevant checks in the order they are “coming up.”

JAMIE OLIVER:
Derogatory.
Term used by chefs de partie to describe someone who is paid lots of money to talk about food but knows no more about food than they do, while they are paid pennies. Clear case of sour grapes.

MAURICE:
This is what Bob used to call a spatula. It is not French for spatula and I have no idea why he did it.

MISE EN PLACE:
Sometimes shortened to mise or abbreviated to MEP. Literally, the putting in place. The daily, inglorious task of getting one's dishes, utensils and setup ready for the shitfight ahead. Kitchen work is more mise than anything else.

NICE BOY:
Derogatory.
A homosexual.

PASTRY CHEF:
Derogatory.
A homosexual.

PART TIMER:
Derogatory.
A chef who does, or is perceived to do, less work than other chefs.

PASS:
The place that all food must go before it leaves the kitchen, where every plate must “pass” the scrutiny of the head chef or
his representative on earth. Final garnishes may be added, sauces tried, stains expunged.

PLONGEUR:
Someone who works in the plonge. A kitchen porter.

POOMPLEX:
Slang. Derogatory.
An idiot.

SOIGNÉ:
Pronounced “swan-yay,” by Bob at least. French word meaning elegant or sophisticated. In the kitchen usually preceded by the English word
fucking
, meaning “very” or “extremely.”

SOLID TOP:
The sheer metal hot plate; source of great heat, as my elbow can attest.

WASTEMAN:
Slang. Derogatory.
A useless person; Dibden.

YOUR COCK-UP, MY ARSE:
A favorite expression of chefs that touches all the bases: profanity, homoeroticism and accusation.

Ramilov has also asked me to include a short section on nouns of assemblage. I am very happy to do so. It is easy to forget Ramilov's flashes of learning amid the many loud reports of his baser nature. His education, so far as I know, was slight, but somewhere in his carousing he has picked up certain facts and details of philosophical interest—his sexual theory based on Kissinger's foreign policy, for instance (
that
should have been a warning)—which he is fond of presenting and employing. The nouns of assemblage is one such area. He clutches like a jackdaw at these shiny items. Yet that does not quite do him justice. I have come to believe there are elements of deep wisdom secreted about Ramilov's person, wisdom of a sort I do not fully understand. This is balanced, though not canceled out, by some extremely poor calls of judgment, of which we shall see more later. The list our wise fool has prepared is below.

A Band of Men

An Ogle of Waitresses

A Wince of Lobsters

A Tirade of Chefs

It is a Skein of Geese in flight, a Gaggle of Geese on water.

A Buzz of Barflies

A Blarney of Bartenders

A Skulk of Foxes

A Peep of Poultry

A Business of Flies

An Unholiness of Ortolans

A Slaver of Gluttons

A Snarl of Tigers

A Fighting of Beggars

A Colony of Ants

A Horror of Apes

I wrote to Ramilov to tell him that I do not think all of these are correct. He wrote back to say they were, and to remind me of my promise.